Posts Tagged ‘Terry Goddard’

Republicans are going to have a good night next Tuesday, a very good night. And it will be, in large part, because President Obama is so unpopular. In the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, Obama’s fav/unfav among likely voters is at a dismal 36%-61%.

For the U.S. Senate, Republicans will win in West Virginia, Montana and South Dakota. Republicans will also win in North Carolina, Arkansas, Iowa and Colorado.

Mitch McConnell will win in Kentucky.

So without knowing what happens in either Louisiana or Georgia (both likely to go to run-offs), Republicans are a lock to retake the U.S. Senate.

In the U.S. House, Republicans will have a net gain of at least 10 seats – giving them the strongest majority since the 1940’s. Those will include wins by Andy Tobin in AZ-01 and Martha McSally in AZ-02.

In Arizona it will be a top-to-bottom sweep of statewide races. Doug Ducey will beat Fred DuVal by close to double digits, Michele Reagan will defeat Terry Goddard, Mark Brnovich will defeat Felicia Rotellini, Jeff DeWit is essentially already the next Treasurer, Diane Douglas will win as Superintendent of Public Instruction and Doug Little and Tom Forese will be the next Corporation Commissioners.

You doubt it’s a bad year for Democrats? Watch network news – and you will see no stories about how bad an election it will be for Democrats. Compare that to 2006, when Republicans were headed for a terrible night, and it was all over the networks for weeks on end. The silence is deafening.

“The only poll that counts is the one taken on Election Day.”It’s a line used thousands of times a year, and I’m pretty sure it was first used by the late Stephen Shadegg – campaign extraordinaire and father of Arizona Congressman John Shadegg.

So the latest poll to pop up, showing Goddard wiping the floor against any Republican in next year’s Governor’s race, should be taken with a grain of salt… or better yet, with a salt lick.

Here is the totality of what you need to know about the efficacy of the poll:

“The pollster is known as a Democratic firm, and the survey was automated and done via telephone.” (emphasis added)

So this was an autodial, robo-call?It is a known fact that Republicans have less tolerance for automated phone calls than Democrats (ok, maybe not a “known fact” but anecdotally, it takes more calls to Republican households than Democrat households to get the same number of respondents on a robo-call survey – trust me, I’ve seen it.)

Given that this was an autodialed robo-call, (which would cost all of about $500 to conduct) I find it a little surprising that Arizona Republic reporter Matt Benson would write on it – and wait until the 11th graph of the story to indicate that it was a robo-call survey.

I’ll make Matt a deal – I’ll commission a robo-call survey of 600 Arizonan’s and I’ll give him the exclusive to write the story – which I expect to be as long as this one.